February 2025 Dates to Note
1st: Venus in Pisces conjunct Neptune (11:33 am ET)
3rd : Mercury in Aquarius trine Jupiter in Gemini (4:52 pm ET), Mars in Cancer square Chiron in Aries 9:44 pm ET)
4th: VENUS ENTERS ARIES (2:57 am ET), JUPITER DIRECT AT 11 DEGREES GEMINI (4:40 am ET)
7th: Venus in Aries sextile Pluto in Aquarius (7:14 am ET),
8th: Sun in Aquarius sextile Chiron on Aries (1:22 am ET), Mercury in Aquarius sextile Chiron in Aries (2:21 am ET)
9th: Sun in Aquarius conjunct Mercury (7:08 am ET), Mars in Cancer trine Saturn in Pisces (8:15 am ET)
10th: Mercury in Aquarius square Uranus in Taurus (2:28 pm ET)
11th: Sun in Aquarius square Uranus in Taurus (2:30 pm ET)
12th: FULL MOON AT 24 DEGREES LEO (8:53 am ET)
14th: MERCURY ENTERS PISCES (7:06 am ET) VALENTINE’S DAY
18th: SUN ENTERS PISCES (5:07 am ET)
20th: Mercury in Pisces square Jupiter in Gemini (3:13 pm ET)
23rd: Mercury in Pisces trine Mars in Cancer (11:58 am ET), MARS STATIONS DIRECT AT 17 DEGREES CANCER (9:00 pm ET)
25th: Mercury in Pisces conjunct Saturn in Pisces ((7:02 pm ET)
27th: Mercury in Pisces sextiles Uranus in Taurus (4:38 am ET), NEW MOON IN AT 9 DEGREES PISCES (7:45 pm ET)Subscribe
The interminable decade that was January is now over, and although astrology doesn’t work on our 12-month calendar, February should feel different in noticeable ways. Note that I’m not saying “better” — but I am saying different, because the planets will shift as the initial shock of these first weeks wear off.
January was marked by the Mars-Pluto opposition and the return of retrograde Mars to Cancer, the homeland, threading violence into the fabric of our everyday lives. From the terrorist attack in New Orleans to the symbolism of an exploding Tesla in Vegas, to wildfires tearing through and burning down thousands of homes in LA, to the decidedly un-subtle violent imagery in that man’s inauguration address, cloaked in the gaslighting of a “Golden Age” metaphor while billionaires raid our treasury, to the widespread violence of ICE raids in every city and state as planes fall out of the sky, the intention is to exhaust us so fundamentally that our nervous systems are left hanging by their last thread. Their strategy is to make us too weak and afraid to fight back. This is what underlies “the cruelty is the point” — the phrase coined by Adam Serwer that continues to perfectly summarize the entirety of both Trump eras.
Pluto is now truly in fixed air sign Aquarius, not just hovering at 0 degrees and readying itself to return to Capricorn like it was in 2023 and 2024, when things were deeply unsettling, but still “normal” to most people. Now, we’re really, truly here in this new era that will span two decades. It’s not lost on me that aviation disasters and fire sparked by harsh winds have marked the doorway to the year as Pluto presses on in the first decan of this cold, harsh, technologically-oriented yet Saturn-ruled sign.
But the darkest side of Pluto in Aquarius is manmade: the implementation of Project 2025, the 900-plus page document that the fascists WROTE DOWN and thousands of us spent last year screaming about. Our response to this must be community building, strategic uprising, and revolution against the three tiers of subjugation of the previous 250 years, the ones that prevented democracy from living up its promise. We need to uproot and crush patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism and turn them to dust, and build something entirely new. In the dying embers of this moment, even while we’re terrified, we must begin this work of organizing our way forward.
The regime is giving us White Christian Nationalism cloaked in Steve Bannon’s “Flood the Zone” strategy delivered by a highly-choreographed reality TV cast, in which not a single player is qualified or competent to run a government. Their only purpose is to dismantle it, keep us scared and sick and poor (and thus pliable), while they reverse-Robin Hood our tax dollars, reallocating our resources from services we need (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security) to billionaires who own the social media we use to communicate and organize our communities. What we’re seeing in the clearest, starkest terms is the shadow side of the Pluto in Aquarius age. I’m almost glad they’re being so nakedly vicious in the first weeks of this fascist regime, because it shows us exactly what we’ll be rebelling against in the weeks, months, and years ahead.
We talked a lot about gaslighting during Trump 1.0. But it has taken on a surreal quality, with a 27-year-old white blond woman on the press podium in the White House talking about the dangers of DEI and how “confidence, skill, and merit” is superior to diversity when she is LITERALLY ONLY IN HER JOB BECAUSE OF WHAT SHE LOOKS LIKE. I have never seen anyone gaslight America quite like this former Fox News intern, married to a 59-year-old man, cosplaying a wife from The Handmaid’s Tale and wearing a cross the size of her head. We are being forced to look at this pedophilic fascist imagery as they cancel Black History Month and Holocaust Remembrance Day. Not only did these disgusting, disgraceful freaks lie about the cause of a tragic plane crash while the bodies of victims were floating in the Potomac, they had the gall to suggest that diversity caused the accident.
The Trump regimes is using psychological warfare on us to break us down, trusting that eroding our safety and stability will keep us from resisting. Some call this “resilience targeting” — but we can fight back by creating a psychological go-bag to access self-care wherever we are. We have to carry not just our go-bags, but each other, as we navigated what’s ahead. And now, to the forecast.
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February begins with a little treat: Venus in late Pisces has just started her post-retrograde shadow as she conjoins Neptune on the 1st, allowing us to dip into the deliciousness of delulu — the fantasy element, the moment we allow ourselves to dream of decadence. This could feel more like an ideal Valentine’s Day would feel if everything went exactly as we wanted it to. But as with all things Neptune, the comedown can be harsh, so be prepared for the reality check on the other side.
On the 4th we get some of our mojo back: Jupiter stations direct in Gemini and Venus charges into Aries, where she will station retrograde on March 1st. This is like being double-teamed by benefics!
Now, the planet of love is in detriment in Aries, but I love her ferocity here. Just because a planet struggles to feel comfortable in a particular sign doesn’t mean it can’t find its footing and express a different facet of that planet’s archetype in a way we need to experience it. Even though Venus in Aries may not conform to patriarchy’s idea of what a woman should look like (see plastic doll/press secretary Karoline Leavitt, above) it shows us how we can use the tropes of feminity to rebel against the fascists forcing us to conform. This was used against the Nazis and I think we might put it to good use again. Sure, this administration is full of mediocre, unqualified men, many of whom are rapists and serial sexual abusers, but one thing remains true: none of them are smart, and they are thus easily manipulated. I’m sure Putin is all over this with Soviet-style honeypots, but what is our plan to take advantage of this?
A few things to note about Venus in Aries during the weeks and months ahead: the last time Venus was in the shadow of a retrograde in Aries was 8 years ago in the winter of 2017. Yes, the last time we inaugurated the fascist clown and put down his Muslim Ban with our sheer will by showing up at airports and protesting while the ACLU got his racist and illegal executive order reversed in the courts, Venus was in much the same position that she is in now, preparing to punch some Nazis, and perhaps smile fetchingly as she does so. I love this for us.
Venus in Aries moving in slow motion before a retrograde asks us to examine what we desire in the most feral way. This can eviscerate the very idea that the personal and the political can ever be separated. These forces in our lives are inseparable, inextricably linked, made of the same flesh and viscera.
Especially now, with a Christofascist regime reaching directly into our bedrooms, one that just removed all mentions of contraception from the CDC website in the last 24-hours, one that’s planning for a national abortion ban as we speak, making trans people’s very existence illegal: there is nothing about the political that is not very, very personal.
I urge you to dive deep into your own desires in the next few months as an act of resistance. They cannot take away our joy, our pleasure, our erotic energy, and cleaving to it with ferocity is a way of saying I WILL NOT COMPLY. Even if your sexuality is vanilla and conventional, this is true for you, too.
Here’s an excerpt from my book Sex and Your Stars: A Sexologist’s Guide to the Erotic Energy of the Zodiac about harnessing the powers of Venus Retrograde.
Lessons about Self-Love During Venus Retrograde
That old cliché about not being able to love others until you learn to love yourself—it’s kind of true, and this lesson is often LOUD during Venus Retrograde phases. Approximately every nineteen months, when Venus descends as an evening star at the start of a Venus Retrograde cycle and then reemerges as a morning star after forty days, we might feel as if we, too, have descended into the deepest reaches of our erotic self-knowledge.
(As in Mercury retrograde, Venus doesn’t actually move backward in the sky, it just appears to.) Yes, our relationships can go a little pear-shaped during this phase, but only because we’re turning inward in ways we usually don’t let ourselves, as we often focus on “the other” when we consider what we desire.
I like to think of Venus Retrograde phases as a kind “desire crucible.” Plunging to the depths of what we want and renewing this commitment to our desires every nineteen months forces us to redirect our erotic energy and review how we’ve expended it since the previous Venus Retrograde cycle. It allows us to deepen our erotic self-awareness and put it into practice.
(Here’s what I wrote about our last Venus Retrograde in Leo during the summer of 2023.)
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Intense nervous system stress is possible again on the 11th and 12th as the Sun and Mercury in Aquarius square Uranus in Taurus. This is jangly as fuck so have your calmative tonics and somatic practices lined up. The Full Moon in Leo can be so sexy and fun some years, but because this one is also square Uranus, it may feel more unhinged. There is a way to play with experimental energy here, and I wish Valentine’s Week felt more romantic/erotic but it’s giving neurotic stress overload. Mercury enters Pisces on the 14th, bringing a modicum of softness to our communication. Since stress is the number one libido-killer, do whatever you can to center and calm and ground yourself this week.
The Sun enters Pisces on the 18th and now we’re fully in this more spiritual season, where the harshness of the fixed air of Aquarius begins to relent. It should start to feel slightly less cruel now, and we can connect to our resilience through compassion.
The most significant shift of the month comes on the 23rd when Mars finally stations direct in Cancer. The days leading up to this could be violent once again, whether in sensibility or events, but after the planetary wobble lets up, we’re in a new space, and this is where we can hopefully find some more stability to take on the regime. It feels like cleaning up after a disaster. The fires are no longer burning, the storm has moved on and the flood retreated, but now we can begin to assess and gather our resources and think about the materials from which we will rebuild.
The New Moon in Pisces on the 27th is ideal for our ideals. I know that these are a hard commodity to come by now, but no one can put a tariff on our dreams. Use your imagination in the most elaborate way in the days leading up to the end of the month. Whether or not you think “manifesting” is woo marketing hokum or you use it regularly, this lunation is powerful stuff, square to Jupiter, and ripe for badass witchery.
I will be updating individual sign-by-sign horoscopes for my paid subscribers over the coming week or so. In the meantime, read my February forecast for WELL+GOOD for your Sun and rising sign.